Day 4 – 51st State Supplemental

I promised the story about Razing one of Cortnie’s buildings in 51st State, so here it is. For the rest of the story read Day 4 – 51st State.

As I said, seeing my first red tokens, and feeling a pending loss, I went for Cortnie’s location, instead of Razing one of my own. It happened to be Sharrash, a producer giving one multicolored contact card to Cortnie every turn. I paid my three red contacts, took my spoils, gave Cortnie her salvage, and she flipped her card to ruins. My actions was returned with one statement. “Oh, I didn’t know we were playing that kind of game.” The rest of the turn finished and I returned some unspent resources and contacts to the supply and started the next turn.

I expected a counter attack, which I hoped I could stop by triggering the end of the game and forcing her to focus on victory points, which I did. Between the distraction of my initial attack, and Cortnie changing tactics mid round, I squeaked by with a win. A win mind you, that was met with a cold stare. The cold stare of my once loving wife.

“You didn’t even use it.” She looked at me with most betrayed look one could give. I, feeling pretty good on my first win, had no idea what she was talking about and I’m sure my face gave that fact away. “You razed my Sharrash, took your spoils, then put them back in the supply at the end of the turn. You didn’t use them. You destroyed it for nothing!”

“No,” I argued, “I used at least one of them.” (I had to have, right?) I did not. I had nothing I could play with them. I had razed her building for two reasons. I hadn’t done that in this game yet, and wanted to know what it was like. But also, shamefully, I wanted to take that little rat man away from her. I didn’t want her to get that silly token every turn.

Afterwards we talked about how she felt, what her strategy was on that final turn, and I learned something. I’m in trouble.

I was right. She had been planning on a counter attack until she realized the end game condition was going to be met. She weighed her two options:

Accept a loss to gain as many red contacts as possible and do as much damage to me as possible, thus letting her vengeance go; OR

Go for the victory, leave me alone, and let her vengeance-these are her words, not mine- ‘grow into something beautiful’.

She chose to hold onto that feeling of betrayal. Nurturing it until a time it’s big enough to go out on its own. Then her feeling of betrayal will team up with her. They will have but one glorious goal in mind, and will succeed at any cost. On that day I’m in trouble.

In fact, I may be in trouble until that day.

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josephsnethen
Joseph has three children and a fantastic wife who lets him spend plenty of time on board games. Without them board games wouldn't be the same. He works as a computer technician for a school district and can be contacted on BoardGameGeek as Kulade. He also writes for DiceTowerNews.com